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For all the feet on the street chasing the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, a key break came when the victim who was carjacked and released by the Tsarnaev brothers on April 19 told the cops his Mercedes could be tracked with one quick call to Mercedes-Benz. They called and an hour later the police had the vehicle surrounded. A shootout ensued and when it was over, older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev was dead, apparently either from gunshot wounds or being run over by his brother.

Boston police aren’t saying much. Mercedes-Benz provided a few details, since the general workings of its mbrace2 telematics system are well-known and described on the Mercedes-Benz USA website. Mercedes’ mbrace is a telematics application best-known for upgradable over the air (OTA) updates, without the need for a dealer visit.

The core features of the $280-a-year mbrace service include automatic crash notification and remote door unlock, as well as stolen vehicle location assistance. For most users, you have to file a written stolen vehicle report with the police first, primarily so Mercedes doesn’t get involved in tracking spouses sneaking around on each other. (Although there is an iPhone app for that, intended to make sure you know where teen drivers are.) The robustness of mbrace was a key reason we named the ML’s big brother, the Mercedes-Benz GL SUV, one of the ExtremeTech ten best tech cars.

The 26-year-old carjacking victim had a 2013 Mercedes-Benz ML 350 SUV with mbrace active (there’s a six-month complimentary period). According to the Boston Globe, once he was released, the victim told police his Benz could be tracked. Boston PD contacted the mbrace call center. Mercedes spokeswoman Donna Boland said the request was authenticated and tracking turned on. “The authorities asked that mbrace be activated [and] it was.” That was about an hour before the confrontation with Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, as police located and then confronted the vehicle and its occupants, the alleged Boston Marathon bombers.

When it was over, Steve Cannon, Mercedes-Benz’s CEO in the US and a former Army Ranger, tweeted, “Just found that our mbrace2 technology helped located the Boston terrorists! Thanks to our amazing law enforcement.”

Make sure to keep your telematics subscription updated (paid for)

Some news reports said the owner described stolen vehicle location as a “satellite tracking system.” Mbrace, as with other telematics systems, uses the GPS satellite system to get an accurate position fix. It’s reported to mbrace (and then to authorities) via the vehicle’s embedded cellular system. So it’s half satellite, half onboard-cellular telematics.

If you’re planning to enlist the police in recovering your stolen car via remote tracking, first make sure your telematics-equipped car has telematics active. This is a gray area that automakers don’t talk a lot about, but the lifesaving features of telematics can be deactivated if you’re not a current, paying subscriber. The features you may lose if you don’t pay up include the most common lifesaving feature, automatic crash notification. The onboard gear, however, remains functional so you can call to resubscribe at any time.

To address customer concerns of cost vs. benefit, automakers are adding more features such as remote door unlock and remote engine start via your smartphone. Hyundai now offers the first three years free on its base-level service, Hyundai Assurance, and before that charged just $79 a year vs. $200-$300 a year. BMW Assist, the equivalent of Mercedes mbrace, had been included for four years and now is free for 10 years. Automakers will be looking at telematics pricing and free service even more in the future. Basic telematics can be installed for about $100, though a 4G system with better bandwidth would cost more. Automakers may decide to give away the core functionality such as crash notification to be good corporate citizens and lure customers to premium services such as smartphone tools (where is my car in the mall parking lot) or send-to-car destination downloads from your PC.

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